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E U L ( ) G Y 



THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 






THE CITY GOVEENMENT OF MANOHESTEK, N. H. 



.TUNE 1st, 1«65. 



BY DANIEL CLARK 



MANCHESTER, X. H. 

\^^ MIRROR STEAM^JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. o 

S^-o ' I860. ^g 



N%V, 



E II L O G Y 



THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE CITY GOVERNMENT OP MANCHESTER, N. H. 



JUNE Ist, 186/5. 



BY DAKIEL CLARK. 









%0FWA<5Hma-^^ 



MANCHESTER, N. H. 

MIRROR STEAM JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 
1865. 



.8 
3 5^4- 



CITY OF MANCHESTER. 

City Clerk's Office, June 7, 1865. 
Hon. Daniel Clark, — 

Sir : I have the honor to be charged with communi- 
cating to you a copy of a Resolution passed by the City Council 
last evening : 

Resolved^ hy the 3Iayor, Aldernien, and Common Council of the 
City of Manchester, in City Council assembled, as follows: That 
the thanks of the City be tendered to the Hon. Daniel Clark, Sen- 
ator in Congress from this State, for the very able and eloquent 
Eulogy pronounced by him before the City Council and citizens 
of Manchester, upon the life and character of our late illustrious 
President, Abraham Lincoln, upon the occasion of the late 
National Fast, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for 
publication. 

In accordance with the above Resolution, you are solicited to 
furnish a copy of the Eulogy at your earliest convenience. 
By order and in behalf of the City Council. 
Yours very respectfully, 

J. E. BENNETT, City Clerk. 



Manchester, June 7th, 1865. 
J. E. Bennett, P2sq., 

City Clerk of Manchester, — 
Dear Sir : I have received your note of this date, com- 
municating a copy of the Resolution of the Mayor and Aldermen 
and Common Council. 

While I cannot but feel that no eulogy can do full and ample 
justice to the life and character of our lamented President, I do 
not feel at liberty to disregard the wishes of the City Council so 
kindly expressed, and I submit herewith a copy for publication. 
Very truly. 

Your ob't serv't, 

DAN'L CLARK. 



EULOGY. 



The Winter and Spring of 1861 was one of alarming anx- 
iety and of fearful forebodings in these United States. The 
fabric of government was tottering, and a house divided 
against itself was threatening to fall. State after State was 
seceding, and declaring itself, if not hostile to, independent 
of the Union. The citizens of such States were seizing 
upon the arsenals and fortifications within their boundaries, 
and appropriating to a hostile purpose the arms and muni- 
tions of war found therein ; and that the supply should be 
abundant, the Secretary of War, with especial care and 
pains-taking, had transported large quantities from Northern 
to Southern depots, and left them with guards and garrisons 
that could be easily overcome. Batteries were being reared 
and guns mounted and shotted against forts still floating 
the old flag, and every preparation was being made to cast 
off" the authority and overthrow a government which had 
conferred nothing but blessings, and those in plentiful 
supply. 

The people of these seceding States openly avowed their 
purpose — a dismemberment and destruction of the Union — 
and they as openly declared that any attempt to maintain 
or re-establish the Federal government, or to execute its 
laws within their boundaries, would be promptly met with 
force and arms ; that they would encounter and submit to 
all the horrors and devastation of civil war rather than sub- 



mil to the rule of a government they had heretofore admin- 
istered, but could no longer control. 

The army had been sent to remote frontiers, whence it 
could not be at once recalled, or gathered in Texas, where 
it could easily be betrayed and surrendered. The navy was 
scattered in foreign seas, and the Secretary of War and the 
Secretary of the Navy were more than suspected of medi- 
tating treason or of sympathizing with the conspirators. 
There were vague rumors that the votes for President and 
Vice President would not be opened and counted on the 
day fixed by law ; that the President elect would not be 
inaugurated, and that by a coiqj cVetat the government would 
be seized, the chosen candidates rejected, and usurpers 
installed in their places. Congress had been unable to do 
anything to meet the ci'isis. Each House had appointed 
committees, proposed bases of settlement, but they had been 
unable to agree to anything satisfactory. A Peace Congress 
was in session, but it had hitherto failed in its mission, and 
was not likely to accomplish anything adequate to the emer- 
gency. Missives and letters announced far in advance that 
nothing could be done, and the lightning of the telegraph 
was used to kindle the flames of civil war. 

The pillars of State were crashing down, as if in the 
grasp of some modern political blind Sampson, while amid 
the confusion aud uproar of civil commotion, or rather in 
advance of much of it, and as if inviting and to make way 
for it, the piteous confession of the weak man at the head of 
the government, he who should have, and who might have, 
breasted and resisted the storm, was heard — that this men- 
ace, this violence, this secession and outrage was wrong, 
clearly and constitutionally wrong, but he could not prevent 
it — that there was " no power to coerce a State into submis- 
sion which Avas attempting to withdraw, or had actually 
wilhdi-awn fi-om the confederacy." 

Ill I lie city (if Washington this alarm was personal as well 
ys iivueral ;iiul political. C!en. Scoll luid sununoiiod what 



men he could command to the defence of the Capital, but they 
were few and far insufficient, while the secessionists of Mary- 
land and Virginia daily threatened to seize the public build- 
ings and all the departments of the government. These build- 
ings were filled with an armed police, and ready at any mo- 
ment to be barricaded as if in a state of siege. Whether the 
Capital was in a friendly or an unfriendly territory could 
not well be determined. The people of Washington were 
divided, some loyal, and some — more, perhaps — disloyal ; 
while many who, like Lee, had been educated and supported 
by the government, were ready not only to desert it, but to 
assist its enemies, and by and by to starve the soldiers of a 
government which had fed them. Men slept uneasily in 
their beds, with arms within their reach, while others patrol- 
led the streets with arms in their hands. There was a 
" fearful looking for that which was to come." 

In the midst of this alarm and these forebodings, it was 
whispered one morning that Abraham Lincoln was in the 
city ; that he had come in the darkness of the night to escape 
assassination in the city of Baltimore ! The rumor ran, 
but men heard it with a shake of the head ; they gathered 
in knots ; they mentioned it in low tones and incredulous 
speech. It could not be so. No one would attack the chief 
magistrate elect. He was needlessly alarmed. And even 
his friends felt, perhaps, that if he had come openly and 
fearlessly, he could have come safely. And when the train 
which was regularl}- to have brought him came through 
Baltimore, and was surrounded by fiends, hooting and cry- 
ing, " Where is he ?" ready to do violence, men would not 
agree that it was anything more than a discourteous out- 
break of passion and rudeness, meaning no further harm. 
Men still would not believe that assas.sination was really 
intended. It could not be so. They knew — some of them, 
certainly, and all might have known — that Wigfall had sat 
in the Senate chamber with the drawer of his desk full of 
cartridges and percussion caps, and that he had been " put 



8 

up " by liis peers in the Senate to insult Governor Andrew 
Johnson of Tennessee with offensive speech, hoping thereby 
to provoke a challenge and then to kill him, because he, of 
all the Southern Senators, was 

" Faithful found among the faithless, faithful ouly he." 

But they would not believe any one would assassinate the 
nation's chosen. They had not become so used then to 
scenes of blood, and little knew of the terrible malignity of 
those passions which had been " set on lire of hell." " To 
fight a duel," they said, " was chivalrous and like the New 
World, but to strike with the dagger or the bullet by stealth 
was like the Old World — dastardly, cowardly, mean, 
felonious." 

But, my fellow-citizens, these doubts must now remove. 
The great and good man has at last fallen by the hand of 
an assassin, and that assassin cradled near Baltimore. He 
came to Washington in a sleeping car, to escape death, and 
that he might perform the fearfully heroic work which 
Providence gave him to do. He has gone from Washington 
— his Avork done — in a car, sleeping that long sleep from 
which he shall not awaken until the reveille of that morning 
when the great Commander-in-Chief shall summon all 
earth's army corps to their last review. 

When he left Springfield, his neighbors gathered about 
him, and, as he asked their prayers, they almost fell upon 
his neck and wept sore, as did the early Christians upon 
Paul's when he went to Jerusalem, not knowing what should 
befall him there. Now again they have assembled around 
him at his home, but in sorrowing, in anguish and in tears, 
to commit him to his burial. " May you die among your 
kindred " was the prayer of Eastern poetry. He died far 
from home, by the assassin's hand, in the most tempestuous 
times, but his neighbors have laid him tenderly to rest upon 
the " prairie bosom of his adopted Illinois." He went forth 
whither he would ; he has returned whither he was borne. 



He directed armies and navies, and launched the fiery bolts 
of war upon the rebel enemies of his country ; ostensibly 
he held the lives of thousands in his hands ; l)ut death 
pointed the way with his pale finger, and he has gone and 
taken his place in the " silent halls." 

Come now, ye that mourn, ye have seen how mercilessly 
he was slain ! and with Avhat " pomp and circumstance of 
woe," with what crowds and tears and long processions they 
have borne a nation's chief to his grave ; come now, and sec 
with what merciless, relentless precision retributive justice 
tracks the murderer to his doom. 

Silently Booth entered the theatre at a side door, his 
horse held ready for him without. He passed around on the 
outside of the audience and entered the passage to the fatal 
box. The carpenter of the theatre had prepared and fitted 
a bar so that, when he had shut, he could fasten the door 
of the passage behind him, that no one might enter to inter- 
rupt or prevent his murderous work. There lie was, with 
pistol and dagger. He could see his victim, but his victim 
did not see him. Approaching unseen, he discharged the 
deadly contents into the head of the President. Brandish- 
ing his dagger, or knife, and striking it full five inches deep 
into the arm of Major Rathbone, who opposed his progress, 
he leaped through the window of the box down upon the 
stage, theatrically exclaiming, " Sic semper ti/rannis.^' He 
passed across the stage, he reached the door, he mounted 
his horse, he is gone. So far he is master of the situation. 
Shall he escape ? 

The Eye that marks the sparrow's fall beheld as well that 
leap upon the stage. Who placed that starry flag around 
the Presidential box, that it should be over the President 
when he fell ? See, it has caught the assassin by the spur — 
it holds him for a moment — it brings him heavily to the 
stage. His leg is broken by the falling leap. No, he shall 
not escape — that flag, which the President in his life had so 
bravely and constantly upheld, now has made certain the 
2 



10 

capture of his assassin. He fled, however, he and Harold, 
across the Anacostia Bridge into Mary hind, through Marl- 
boro' to Lconardstown, and thence into the swamps of that 
flat region. 

And now tlie President is dead. He liesm splendid state 
at the Presidential mansion, and in the rotunda of the Ca|> 
itol, imder the magnificent statue of Liberty, which a few 
days before had witnessed his inauguration ; while his mur- 
derer, concealed in swamps, wet, shivering, cold, hungry, 
half starved, now and then steals out to buy a bit of bread, 
or potato, or piece of ham, of some sympathizing rebel who 
dares not harljor the outlaw, wherewith to baffle absolute 
starvation. 

Now they bear the body of the President to Baltimore. 
He lies again in state where four years before they would 
have killed him. 

liooth crosses the Potomac — the Rappahannock. He takes 
refuge in a Ijarn, broken-legged and weary. His pursuers 
have marked liis track. They surround the building. They 
demand his surrender. He refuses and defies them. They 
set it on fire, as if to kindle about him the flames of hell 
while he lived. The flames crackle, and scorch him ; he is 
dri\en forward by the fire and baclvward by those who seek 
him. Harold surrenders, and he curses him to his teeth ; 
he will not yield ; he defies capture alive. 

When Massacluisetts men marched through Baltimore 
tlie 19th of A])ril, 18G1, ]\Iaryland men shot them down in 
the street, and now, when a Maryland man has killed the 
President of tlie I Jiited States, a ^lassachusetts man l)y 
ado})tion — Boston Corbett — witli fatal precision, hits him in 
the head, and in tlu; same side of it, and almost in the same 
place wliere he hit his victim. He yields ; he falls ; they 
pick him up and bear him to the air, and, in the agony of 
his death, then opens upon him the terrible enormity of liis 
ci'ime, and he exclaims, " It is useless ! useless !" They 
can-y liim to Wasliington, and lie lies al)oard an iron-clad, 



11 

awaiting sucli a disposition as the ministers of justice may 
award. 

Now tliey bear on the President to his tomb, they hiy liim 
in his grave, and thousands crowd to see where they have 
laid him. In his jeweled coffin, with floAvers, and plumes, 
and costly drapery, they lay him to his rest. " AVithin a 
century no man's death has excited," says an English 
paper, " such deep emotions or created so wide and univer- 
sal a sensation ; around no man's bier within that time have 
so many persons truly mourned or so many tears been shed." 
His urn is a mighty nation's heart. Costly marbles shall 
mark the spot where rests the emancipator of a race and the 
savior of his country. 

But the body of Booth — two men wrapped it in a gray 
army blanket ; by night they placed it in a boat ; they rowed 
out into the darkness. It is all that is known. From that 
dark unknown there comes no sound to tell whither he has 
gone, or where he lies. Whether he rots in earth or is 
nibbled and gnawed by the fishes of the river, bay, or sea, 
with a shot or cannon or mill-stone to liis neck, who can 
tell ? Hunted like a wolf, shot down like a dog, the place of 
his burial let none know. So perish every one who shall 
strike at his country's life or its chosen head, and ever thus 
may come the remorseful, bitter, unavailing cry — " It is 
useless, useless." 

Let us not, however, in our indignation against Booth 
and his active participators, overlook the real assassin and 
the real author of this crime. Booth was but an agent, an 
instrument. Slavery and the slave power bid the President 
die, and was the instigator of the hellish wickedness. It 
conceived the mazy, multifarious plot, embracing and entan- 
gling Lincoln, and Johnson, and Seward, and Stanton, and 
Grant in a web of death. It fired Booth's brain, it steeled 
his heart, it nerved his arm, it looked out of his eyes, it 
loaded, it aimed, it discharged the fatal weapon, it sent the 
bullet crashint? through the skull and into the brain of the 



12 

President, it stole consciousness, it induced stupor, it closed 
his eyes, and it " sent him away." 

I do not now refer to any alleged participation Davis, or 
Thompson, or Tucker, or Saunders may have had in the 
particular acts or designs of the immediate actors ; for they, 
too, were the agents and instruments of this all-absorbing, 
monopolizing pest ; but I refer to the pest itself — that great 
commanding interest and power in whose behalf, and to 
make which perpetual, the rebellion was instituted, and this 
cruel civil war was forced on the country ; wliich murdered 
our men in its outset at Baltimore, and Ellsworth at Alex- 
andria ; which played havoc at Bull Run ; which dug up 
dead bodies of the slain, burned their flesh, made baccha- 
nalian cups of their skulls ; which brooded pestilence and 
malaria in tlie Chickahominy ; which showed no mercy at 
Fort Pillow ; which guarded Libby and Castle Thunder ; 
which stole blankets, clothing and money from captured 
men ; which laid them on the freezing ground with bare 
heads and feet, without house or shelter ; Avhich stalked 
about Belle Isle, gloating in the misery it could inflict ; and 
which in the gaunt form and guise of famine went among 
the men at Salisbury, and Columbia, and Andersonvillc, and 
Florence, and with its skinny fingers held the platter of 
starvation to their famished mouths, and anon came with- 
the dead cart, and picking up the bodies as they lay here 
and there wliere they had crawled to die, tumbled them in, 
carted them away, and " dumped " them into some hole or 
ditcli, first to blacken, tlicn to Avaste, and then to bleach; 
nay, to be picked by the buzzards, and gnawed by the prowl- 
ing beasts of night ! It murdered your soldiers, your sons, 
brothers, husbands, fathers. It has now murdered your 
President, your twice chosen, in the hour of his and your 
triumph, and of its defeat. Twice, certainly, it had sought 
his life before — at Baltimore, and at the second inauguration 
— for he had been slavery's sturdiest foe ; lie wielded all free- 
dom's artillery; he had struck the chains from four millions 



13 

of its victims, and had set his face for its utter and entire 
extirpation from every State and every Territory. 

Shall Booth, then, die, and slavery live ? Shall the agent 
perish and the principal survive ? Will you lament and weep 
over the effect, and retain and cherish the cause ? Will men 
hang the drapery of mourning about their doors and in their 
windows for the President slain, and still plead for, or excuse' 
an institution which sought his life from the day of his first 
election to the day of his death, which it finally accom- 
plished ? Then are your tears vain, your habiliments of 
sorrow a mockery, for ye will not cast away that wiiich is 
the cause of your sorrow. 

My fellow-citizens, looking at this strange scene of vio- 
lence and assassination — at its cause and progress, one can 
hardly realize that he is passing through an actual occur- 
rence ; but he fancies he is reading a page from the history 
of the Old World, and a past age. Monarchs and princes 
of the Eastern continent have been assassinated, but never 
before a President of the United States. History is said to 
reproduce itself, and many of the circumstances in the death 
of the Prince of Orange in IGS-l are w^onderfully like those 
in the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. But in one re- 
spect they are widely different. William the Silent fell 
when his country could illy spare him, and his last words 
were : " 0, my God, have mercy on this poor people !" Mr. 
Lincoln died in the hour of his triumph, when the war was 
substantially ended, the confederacy broken, and their capi- 
tal captured. Beyond the horror and grief of such an 
occurrence, the country received no shock. His successor 
stepped into his place and the government was not staggered. 
All its functions were undisturbed, and not even the flow of 
money into the coffers of the Treasury checked. Mr. Lincoln 
fell as a strong swimmer is engulphed in the ocean. He 
sank, the waves closed over him, and still rolled on in their 
majesty and strength, as if there were no sleeper beneath; 
The government still bears on in all its offices and depart- 



14 

ments, exliibiting to the world, without intciTegiiiim, its 
strength and its perpetuity. 

What a spectacle to the Old World, where the violent 
death of a ruler has been made the occasion of overthrow- 
ing the government, proscribing its greatest statesmen, 
supplying victims to the gallows or guillotine, and advancing 
the fortunes of some more despotic adventurer. Our leader 
falls, but there is no shock to the machinery of the govern- 
ment, no stoppage, no collision, no crash ; but under a new 
conductor the great train moves on, with no displacement of 
switch or change, of route, to the great depot of restored 
l)cace and freedom to all races beneath the flag. 

There is an old maxim : " Say nothing of the dead but 
what is good." " Dc mortuis nil nisi bonum.'''' Some lin- 
guists read it : Say nothing of the dead but what is true. 
De mortuis nil nisi verum. I accejjt on this occasion both 
readings. There was so much that was good and at the 
same time true, and so much that was true and at the same 
time good, in tlie life and character which we are to con- 
template, that it may invite eulogy or challenge criticism. 

The early personal history of Mr. Lincoln Avas not remarka- 
ble. His was one of the many instances where a boy of 
strong traits })ushes himself up under great difficulties, 
surmounts every ol)stacle, gains notoriety, perhaps achieves 
renown, and then dies, leaving a most salutary example, and 
the memory of a great and good life. So as I have seen a 
plant force itself up throngh the frozen earth, or, it may be, 
.ice in the garden, where it was not expected, and grow, and 
bud, and blossom, and liU the air with fragrance. 

He was born of humble and obscure, but worthy parents, 
in Kentucky, February 12, 1809. He was of Quaker 
origin. His grand-parents lived in Pennsylvania, thence the 
family went to A^irginia, and thence into Kentucky. His 
UKjtlicr seems to have Ijcen a Ciu-istian woman, for she much 
desired her son should learn to read the Bible, a book with 
which in after life he made himself familiar. His fatlier. 



feeling often the need of a better education himself, did 
what his limited opportunities would allow for his son ; but 
not much could be achieved without a teacher, in a forest 
home to which they were obliged for miles to cut a new 
road as they went. His youth was spent in poverty and 
toil. His education, says Lanman, was limited. He spent 
two years at school in Strafford county, Virginia, and after- 
wards taught school, and studied law in Culpepper county, 
in the same State. He removed to Indiana in 1816, and 
Illinois in 1830, At one time he was a boatman, then an 
agriculturist. At another time he was a postmaster in a 
small village, and at some time kept a small store. He 
seems to have been industrious, and did what his hands 
could find to do. He was a persevering young man, im- 
proving his mind, and with good, if not high aims. He was 
afterwards a captain in the Black Hawk war, and for four 
years a member of the Illinois Legislature, He commenced 
the practice of Law at Springfield in that State, and was a 
member of the convention which nominated Zachary Taylor 
for President. He belonged to the old whig school of 
politics, and was a member of CongTcss from 1847 to 1849, 
one Congress. 

In 1856 his name was presented to the Kepublican Con- 
vention by his friends for Vice President, but Mr. Dayton 
received the nomination. In 1858 he canvassed the State 
of Illinois as a candidate for the Senate of the United States, 
against Mr, Douglas ; and there exhibiting those remarkable 
traits which so much distinguished him, he won a national 
reputation. Judge Douglas was a very able debater, a 
sagacious politician, full of expedients, a fearless champion, 
a difficult man to catch, and a worse one to hold. Mr. 
Lincoln showed himself fully able to deal with him. He 
planted himself at once on a higher ground than his adver- 
sary occupied, maintained it with so much ability that he 
could not be driven from it ; and if he lost the Senatorship, 
he won the Presidency, for it was that splendid contest, and 



16 

the masterly manner he waged it, which made him the 
candidate of the Republicans in 1860. 

It was at the beginning of this campaign that he opened 
his speech with the afterwards celebrated declaration, " A 
house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not 
expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." 
Little did he then think how soon that point would be at- 
tained, nor through what bloody scenes we should reach it. 

The personal appearance of Mr. Lincoln was not prepos- 
sessing. Many of you have seen him, and need no descrip- 
tion. His figure was tall, his limbs large, and, as some one 
said of Chief Justice Marshall's, hung loosely as if strung 
on wires. His muscles were small, joints angular, features 
large and marked, motions ungraceful, posture unseemly, 
and his carriage and general appearance undignified. 

But with all this roughness of exterior, he had a charac- 
ter of singular goodness, beauty, and force. He combined 
qualities seemingly so different as to make analysis difficult. 
He was mirthful as a child ; gentle as a woman ; resolute as 
a man ; sagacious as a statesman ; grave as a judge ; and 
merciful as an angel of Heaven. His virtues were many 
and his faults few, and they all inclining to virtue's side. 
There was an apparent complexity of character, and yet, 
such was its wondrous simplicity, or rather transparency, 
that one could not be with him a single half hour and not 
feel that he was a man upon whom the utmost reliance 
could be placed ; that said what he thought, and meant 
what he said. 

He was at times reticent, as lie was obliged to be by the 
circumstances in which he was placed ; but, if he said any- 
thing, you never were deceived by it. Even men who failed 
to get office at his hands never complained that he had 
promised and did not fulfil. 



17 

There are some men you are never easy with — that you 
never can rely iipon. They approach you walking back- 
wards ; they say what they do not mean ; they work by 
contraries ; meet you going the other way ; shake hands 
behind their backs, and under a fair exterior are full of 
deceit and duplicity. Their yea is not yea, nor their nay, 
nay ; but their yea is nay, and their nay, yea ; and they are so 
selfish that they will take advantage of an act of kindness 
and return an injury, if it will do them any good. 

Upon the battle-field at Antietam lay a wounded Union 
soldier. He was shot stone blind. The ball entered about 
an inch back of the angle of the right eye, passed behind 
it, severing the optic nerve, and went out at the other eye, 
completely demolishing it. Eternal night had settled down 
upon him, but otherwise he was uninjured. He could talk, 
he could hear, he could walk, but he could not see. Pres- 
ently he heard some one near him — another wounded man. 
"Who are you?" said he. "A wounded man," was the 
reply. " Where ?" " In the leg — it is broken." " Can you 
see ?" said the first man. " Yes," said the other, " I can 
see well enough, but I cannot walk." '" Well," said the 
blind soldier, " I can walk, and if I can get to you and get 
you on my shoulders, you can be eyes for me, and I will be 
legs for you, and we will get off the field together." He did so. 
He placed the man with the broken leg on his shoulders, 
and he told him which way to go, and they started ; and 
" be darned," said the man, relating the occurrence to me 
at Judiciary Square Hospital, " if the rascal didn't steer me 
right into a rebel camp, and I was a prisoner for my act of 
benevolence." 

But no such man was Abraham Lincoln. He practiced 
no deceit. He was shrewd and sagacious, but he would not 
mislead. He never carried a blind man into a ditch. 

Have you sometimes, upon some clear, deep lake, gazed 
down into its pure depths, and strained your eyes to discern 
the bottom ? Now you could see it, and again, passing over 
3 



18 

some deeper place you could not, for the very depth ; but 
still the water was transparent, and clear, and pure ; 
only the great depth prevented you from seeing the sand 
and rocks below. Or have you rode beside some stream 
of a clear day, or evening, and seen mirrored in its bosom 
the trees and bushes on its banks, or, it may be, the stars of 
night ? Such was his character. You might gaze deep 
down to its very bottom, and it was still pure. If there 
was anything you did not comprehend, it was because you 
did not sound its depths. Or you might watch its surface, 
and it would reveal to you in beautiful tracery all the cir- 
cumstances by which it was surrounded. And if at times 
the tempest howled, the winds blew, and the lake and stream 
were ruffled, and the waves run, and you could neither gaze 
into its depths, nor behold the pictures reflected from its 
surface, you knew the water was still pure, and would be 
again clear Avhen the waves had subsided. 

His love of truth was remarkable. It could not well be 

otherwise — a character so good in itself could not be false 

I to others; because if dishonest and untrue to others, it 

Tmust be dishonest and untrue to itself. A misstatement or 
a concealment seemed to troul)lc him. Perhaps I shall be 
pardoned for an illustration somewhat personal. 

During the six or seven days retreat from the Chicka- 
liominy to Harrison's Landing the public anxiety was ex- 
treme. It was })articularly so at Washington. There were 
rumors of battles, of defeat, of destruction of property and 
retreat, Ijut no one could learn or uflirm with certainty what 
had haj)pened. 

The retreat began, I think, on Friday. So great on Tues- 
day following was the anguish of suspense, that I deter- 
mined to go the next morning to tlie war office, and see 
what information I could gather. 1 did so early Wednesday. 
I found Mr. Stanton and the President closeted together. 
The latter evidently sad and in much dejection. After ex- 
ciuinguig salutations, I said, "I have come, gentlemen, to 



19 

learn the news. Have you any ?" " None," said they. 
" Have you no news ?" I repeated. " None," said they 
again, " if you have, we shall be glad to hear it." 

" Mr. President," said I, " this suspense is well nigh in- 
supportable, and if at this late day you have no news from 
the army, I shall begin to be discouraged." 

" Mr. Clark," said tlie President, with a look I shall never 
forget, " I am sorry you came in here, for when a Senator 
says he is discouraged, I am discouraged too." 

" Mr. President," said I, " you know I am your friend 
and the friend of your administration. I would not dis- 
courage you. I would work for you and the country until 
nothing is left of me." 

" That's the talk," said the Secretary, catching me by the 
hand, " that's the talk." 

" Come," said the President, " sit down by me and let me 
tell you." I did so, and he told me what he knew of the 
fearful disaster. We talked an hour. 

The disinclination of the President to tell me what had 
happened, the declaration that there was no news, made no 
particular impression on me at the time. It was ovcrlayed 
and obliterated by the great events transpiring. But not so 
with him. He would never forget it, and more than once, 
a year or two afterward, when I called to see him, he would 
say, " Come in, Mr. Clark. You are the man to whom I 
came nearer telling a lie than to any other man in my life. 
The truth is, affairs were so bad I did not at first dare to 
tell you." 

But in full measure with his sincerity and his truth, was 
his kindness of heart. No one could appeal to him in vain, 
unless the most stringent public necessity compelled him 
otherwise. Mercy was the quality he loved most, and mercy 
to his foes as well as to his friends. He would pardon the 
criminal and the deserter, and often, perhaps too often, let 
the rebel go. His door-keepers had standing orders from 
him, (no matter how great might be the pressure for ad- 



20 

niittance) — if Senators and Representatives had to be 
turned away without an audience — he must see, before the 
day closed, every messenger who came to him praying that 
some condemned life might be saved. He would have no 
account of blood to settle. " Some of our generals com- 
plain," said he, " that I impair discipline and subordination 
in the army, by my pardons and respites ; but it makes me 
rested after a hard day's work, if I can find some good ex- 
cuse for saving a man's life, and I go to bed happy as I 
think how joyous the signing of my name will make him 
and his family and friends." 

This kindness was the natural growth of his noble heart. 
It sprang neither from policy or education, but out of the 
virgin soil. When some friends would say to him that they 
wished he had a little more of Jackson's sternness, he would 
lift his beaming face and reply, " I am just as God made 
mo, and cannot change." Of all that he ever said or wrote, 
nothing will be remembered so long or so fondly as that 
already celebrated declaration of his second inaugural: 
" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives ns to see the right, let iis 
strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the na- 
tion's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his Avidow and his orphans, to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves and with all nations." It was sublimely uttered. 
There he stood beneath the dome of the Capitol ; for four 
years his administration had been made a road of cares and 
thorns by the enemies of his country ; they had sought his 
life and that of his nation ; they had maligned him abroad 
and abused liim at home ; they had called him " tyrant," 
" usurper," " baboon ;" they had made his nights sleepless and 
his days anguish ; they had wasted i)ropcrty and shed l)lood. 
His native Kentucky was ravaged and wasted, and his 
adopted Illinois in mourning for her loved and lost. They 
had tram])lcd on the flag. He remembered Sumter, and 



21 

Bull Run, and Fredericksburg, and Chancellorville, and 
Chickamauga, and still there was " malice for none.'^ And 
now the tide had turned, and had swept from Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg, surging up Lookout Mountain and Mission- 
ary Ridge, and down upon Dalton and into Atlanta, till it 
met the ocean at Savannah, and turning, rushed through 
the swamps, and lashed up the hill-sides of the Carolinas — 
and again it had swept the Shenandoah Yalloy, down tln-ough 
the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, across the James, and 
around Petersburg and Richmond, and tlic end of the re- 
bellion had well nigh come. He stood a nation's saviour, 
triumphant over his foes, a victor, and his large heart was 
filled " with charity for all." 

" For Abraham Lincoln," observes the same English 
paper, " a cry of regret will be raised all over the civilized 
world." But if I mistake not, they will regret him most 
who slew him. The world mourns at his bier ; but, though 
late, none will mourn more bitterly than they who will 
need his great mercy to pardon their offences. 

As they bare him to his last rest, poverty in its rags, labor 
with its hard hand, and wealth with its abundance and ease, 
came and melted into tears by the side of the rumbling 
hearse. But more scalding will be the tears of those who 
weep over the falling fortunes of the rebellion, for high 
among the mottoes, there appeared on the sides of the build- 
ings by which the procession went, with prophetic signifi- 
cance — like that hand-writing on the wall which made 
Belshazzar's knees tremble — " Mercy is slain, but Justice 
still lives." 

Through the crushed bones and brains of the President 
the people see more clearly the deep malignity of the leaders 
of the rebellion, and they will demand for them a sterner 
doom. 

Some one quaintly remarked that Mr. Lincoln tempered 
judgment with mercy, but that his successor would temper 
mercy with judgment. 



22 

Mercy to traitors, he has said with great force and preg- 
nant meaning, may be cruelty to the nation. Sometimes it 
has seemed to be so. 

A blockade-running pilot was captured and confined in 
Fort Delaware. His friends appealed to the President for 
his release. They told of his penitence and suffering 
family. He let him go — to pilot to our shores more guns 
and more ammunition, wherewith to slay more of the Union 
defenders. 

Union prisoners starved in hospitals and prisons. They 
lingered from day to day, pining, longing for something to 
eat, until flesh and strength departed, and their projecting 
eye-balls glared on vacancy, and forgetting their own names, 
they sat around and chattered on the ground like so many 
monkeys ; and when this enormous, revolting, fiendish con- 
duct was brought to his notice, such was the tenderness of 
his heart, no persuasions, no entreaties of friends, no urgency 
of the public service (though he loved the soldier, and said, 
" How willingly would I exchange places to-day with the 
soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Poto- 
mac") could induce him to retaliate on them. " We will 
not," he said, " be barbarians because they arc." And yet, 
when Congress grappled with the matter, and expressed in 
unmistakal)le sentences that the wicked and cruel conduct 
must stop, or it should be visited in kind on their own men, 
it led at once to an exchange, and thousands of lives were 
saved by the utterance of a more determined policy. 

At the terrible massacre of Fort Pillow, the world stood 
aghast. It seemed as if the fiends of hell had escaped and 
become incarnate. Butchery ruled the hour, and in its 
maddened passage, nature, luimanity and God were all for- 
gotten. 

I will not recite the details of that liorrid occurrence ; 
])ut you Avill remember how loud and general was the de- 
mand for retaliation — so loud and clear that the President 
heard it ; and at a public meeting in Baltimore he said, that 



23 

if the facts, when fully ascertained, were as reported, swift 
retribution would follow. But it never did so. The black 
man was still left unprotected, and the fact that so few black 
prisoners have ever been returned to us, tells but too plainly 
their hapless fate. 

But perhaps this was wise and well. Sure it is, no cruel 
act can be alleged against the dead Chief Magistrate. In 
liim the divine quality of mercy shone conspicuous, and no 
tear was ever willingly draAvn by him, no drop of blood 
shed, no pain or anguish inflicted. 

The humblest, the poorest, the feeblest, shared his sympa- 
thy and love. He was full of gushing impulses, and if he 
erred, it was on mercy's side. Allied to this tenderness of 
heart, was another peculiar, or I should say, notable trait of 
character — to wit., his mirthful sociability. Under the ter- 
rible pressure upon him, his nature was ever still bounding 
up. It had wonderful elasticity. He would sit down to the 
gravest matter, and presently you should hear his explosive, 
clear, ringing laugh, at some pointed story, which, like the 
sunlight on the storm-cloud, lighted up the darkness, and 
perhaps indicated the way; for the stories always had a 
palpable point and application. Sometimes they were ex- 
haustive. 

Not unfrequently they took from the dignity of the magis- 
trate, but they always illustrated the subject. They seemed 
to me like the safety-valves of an engine, which prevented 
the fuR heart from bursting. So of going to the theatre. 
" People," said he, " may think strange of it, but I must 
have some relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill 
me." I have sometimes doubted if he could have staggered 
under the weary load upon him, unless he could have re- 
lieved himself in some such way. There can be no doubt 
this trait added to his vitality, and sometimes gave him 
wonderful power. An apt story or happy turn not unfre- 
quently disposed of the argument, and sometimes of the 
combatant. 



24 

Tims in liis great debate with Mr. Douglas, the " little 
giant" had accused him of tending bar, alluding to his 
keeping a grocery store. " True," said Mr. Lincoln, " the 
Judge and I have both tended bar, I on the inside, he on 
the out." Mr. Douglas never again alluded to this portion 
of history. 

This mirthful hal)it added wonderfully to his popularity, 
and I have often imagined him in some store in the free 
West, with his feet, perhaps, elevated on some flour barrel, 
setting the whole company in a roar, and the delight of 
everybody about him. Let, however, no one suppose Mr. 
Lincoln was a trifler. He was not a Nero. He pondered, 
he weighed the apparent consequences, and he prayed over 
the mighty interests committed to his charge. 

In a letter to a lady, September 6, 1864, he says: " We 
hoped for a happy termination of this war long before this, 
but God knows best and has ruled otherwise. We shall all 
acknowledge his wisdom and our errors therein." 

He was grave, at times, to sadness, and the deep sigh that 
Avould sometimes escape him, would tell how that great 
heart was troubled. He gave to the country his almost un- 
divided attention. His industry was remarkable. No two 
or three administrations had half the work to do whitih his 
had ; yet he found time for almost everything — did it, for 
the most part, readily and well. He gave great satisfaction. 
Unselfish and unpretending, he labored steadily on ; saga- 
cious in conception, skilled and shrewd in execution, he 
accomplished far more tlian most men could have done, and 
carried the country safely through dangers and difficulties 
appalling in their magnitude and complications. 

He was faithful to his friends, and grappled them to him- 
self with "■ hooks of steel." He was constant, and not 
changeable. If he had once taken a man to his confidence 
he held him there, and would not let him go. Suspicion, 
slander, reproach, could hardly drive him to change his 
opinion. 



on 



When Mr. Chase resigned the Treasury, and he felt 
obliged to select another for his place, he still retained his 
friendship for his old Secretary, and made him Chief Justice 
when opportunity offered. 

Here let us pause for a moment and remark how Provi- 
dence has been in all the shifting scenes of tl\is great four 
years drama. Upon this same high court — the Supreme 
Court of the United States — in the first, act sat a man as 
chief who from his high place had declared that fifty years 
ago a person of African descent had no rights which a white 
man was bound to respect ; and for that reason he would 
accord him no more now. But if he did not respect their 
rights, God did, and when the last act came, and the rights 
of these men, in new forms and aspects, were to be deter- 
mined, another man sat in that high place. So pass we on. 
" The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceeding 
fine." 

But not more faithful to his friends was Mr. Lincoln, than 
he was kind to his enemies, or those who opposed him. 
With what a gushing heart does he extend the hand of 
friendship to his " dissatisfied countrymen " in his first 
inaugural ! " I am loth to close," he says. " We must not 
be enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of 
affection. The mystic cord of memory, stretching from 
every battle-field and patriot's grave to every living heart 
and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely it will 
be, by the better angels of our nature," Surely he had 
" malice for none," but " charity for all." Notwithstanding, 
however, this great good-will, and, as it were, beautifully 
combining with it, he had at times great tenacity of pur- 
pose. He came to his conclusions somewhat slowly, did not 
determine until he had maturely considered ; but when he 
had determined upon a course to be pursued, he followed it 
4 



26 

closely and unflinchingly. If he was persuaded he was 
right, he took no step backward. 

Of the Emancipation Proclamation, he said : " I told 
them in September, if they did not return to their allegiance, 
and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this 
pillar of their strength, and now the promise shall be kept, 
and no word of it will I ever recall." And no word did he 
ever recall. Though he is dead, that proclamation lives in 
perpetual verdure, and from it posterity shall gather, in the 
succeeding ages, fresh leaves for his chaplet of renown. 

In intellect, Mr. Lincoln was far above the average of 
men. He had rare gifts and powers. He could never have 
reached the lofty eminence he occupied, without them. Born 
a poor boy, in obscurity, it was his natural force of character, 
combined with goodness and a love of learning, which grad- 
ually opened the way to him and made him equal to the 
" occasion sudden." His was no adventitious, accidental 
popularity, it was the growth of rare merit and ability. 
His perceptions were quick and clear, his comprehension 
large, and judgment deliberate and firm. He was an able 
debater — few more so. He saw at once the point on which 
the question hinged, and he made the whole debate turn 
upon it. He parried readily and skillfully, and thrust 
sharply. His statements were jrlways clear ; his language 
quaint, not always elegant, but forcible and selected for his 
purpose. He always seized the gist of the subject, and with 
such an apparent persuasion of its truth, that he carried 
conviction to his hearers. 

If eloquence consists in the graces of the schools, then 
had he little of it. But if he is tlie most eloquent man, 
Avlio in speech gains his point oftenest, then he had few equals. 
And this was alike true in written and oral discourse. He 
could write or speak with ccpial readiness, ease and force. 
Many of his compositions are models. For the occasions, 
his two inaugurals can scarcely be excelled, while his paper 
on the subject of arbitrary arrests completely exhausted the 



27 

subject, and did not permit of a successful answer. Few 
men could hit tlie popular judgment as he could, or reach 
the popular heart. 

But I must pass on. It is time this brief, shadowy sketch 
of his personal character should close, and we turn for a few 
moments to the acts of his administration ; for, to determine 
his greatness, we miist consider what he has accomplished 
even more than what he was. He had all the noble quali- 
ties of his mind and heart before his election. They made 
him conspicuous. His acts have made him great, immortal, 
and with these, history shall embalm him, and the fame and 
fashion of the man shall thus endure till history and litera- 
ture shall have perished together. 

Could anything be more cheerless, dreary and dishearten- 
ing than the prospect before this noble, calm and resolute 
man, when he assumed the executive chair ? Half of all 
the square miles over which the government rightfully ex- 
tended and over which he was called to execute the laws, 
was the scene of a wide-spread revolt, ready to burst into a 
flagrant rebellion. There was a conspiracy to overturn the 
government within that territory, and to set up another in 
its place. The leading men were engaged in that conspiracy, 
and fearfully in earnest to make it successful. They seized 
upon the machinery of the State governments, and set it to 
work to accomplish their design. They first withdrew them 
from the Union, and then combined them against it. They 
created new legislatures, formed a new Congress, enacted 
new laws, and soon made it fearfully apparent that if the 
national supremacy was to be maintained, the laws executed, 
and the integrity of the nation preserved, it was to be done 
by force and arms. But how b}'- force and arms ? " Before 
you can march armed men into the South to subjugate 
them," said their friends in the North, " you must march 
over our dead bodies." 

Where was the force, and where the arms for the purpose ? 
Anticipating our necessities, the army had been sent into 



28 

remote quarters, that it should not be at hand for use. The 
officers were resigning, thus weakening it, and going over to 
the insurgents, thus strengthening them. Arms were plun- 
dered from the arsenals, not only that they might not be 
used by us, but that they might use them against us. 

The government had fortifications, yards and forts in 
various sections of that country, which, had they been held 
in our possession, might have served as footholds and bases 
of operations. But by either a weak indulgence to, or a 
wicked complicity with treason, they had been left with fee- 
ble garrisons, notwithstanding repeated warnings, and they 
had been seized and were held against us. 

Eight millions and more of people were combined against 
us, in a country admirably fitted for defence, and into that 
country we must go, occupy and hold it, or the rebellion 
would be a success. They were a brave and fighting people, 
skilled in weapons and delighting in their use. They had 
a fertile soil, yielding abundance, and a product which the 
world sought and paid for. They had labor to secure that 
product ; railroads, boats and rivers to bear it to market. 
They had ports to deliver it, and if allowed to be sold and 
delivered, they would supply themselves not only with the 
necessities and comforts of life, but with all the material 
of war. 

But how could wc prevent its being sold and delivered ? 
Their country was full of rivers, and bays, and ports, and 
to those places foreign ships would come and bear it away. 
Will you blockade those ports ? How ? Where are your 
ships ? In foreign seas. Your navy is not only small, but 
absent. Blockade the ports! They have thousands of miles 
of coast, and all the fleets now in' the world could scarcely 
suffice to do it, even if foreign nations would not interfere. 
But tliey will interfere, it was said. Tiicy must liave that 
product which the South has to sell, and their necessities, if 
not their inclinations, will compel them to do it. That they 
would rejoice to do it, no one doubted ; that they would 



29 

seize the slightest occasion as an excuse for it, all believed ; 
and that they Avould take advantage of our difficulties and 
divisions, all feared. Here, then, are no armies to over-run 
and occupy the rebellious country, and no ships to blockade 
their ports. 

These armies and these ships must be had, or the work 
given up. Men must be raised and armed, ships procured 
and manned, or the national integrity cannot be preserved. 
But how can this be done ? There is no money in the 
Treasury with which to hire men, purchase arms or mate- 
rial, or build, buy, or charter ships. 

Was ever a nation so helpless, and so unprepared for an 
emergency like this ? Strong in numbers, rich in resources, 
we were ; but men were not organized into armies, nor 
the resources shaped into ships, forts, arms, or munitions of 
war. They must be so before used, and to this task he first 
addressed himself — calmly, silently, fixedly, heroically. 
There was hesitation, but no shrinking — moderation, but 
no lack of will — caution, but no fear. 

How well he did his work, history will tell. With the 
aid of the men he called about him — '■'■facit per alivm, 
facit per se " — he covered the ocean with ships, and com- 
pelled foreign nations to look on and maintain their itching 
neutrality, with no intervention, open or avowed — while 
he shut up the rebellious ports. He supplied the Treasury 
with the necessary funds. He fought these armies and 
shifted their commanders, until victory followed victory — 
and they occupied most of the revolted territory. He dashed 
his ships by the forts at New Orleans and Mobile, and run 
the batteries at Port Hudson and Vicksburg, and scattered 
the enemy's ships at Memphis. He carried the flag at 
Lookout Mountain up among its fellow stars, and compelled 
Sumter to bow its head, and receive it again on its shattered 
battlements. He crushed the rebellion, and preserved the 
government of his country. 

Nations, through all time, shall accord his triumphant 



30 

virtues, his wisdom, and his success, and high on that pillar 
of fame, where they have enrolled the name of the Father 
of his Country, they will inscribe that of its Saviour. 

But not wholly — perhaps some would say not chiefly — 
does his claim to honor or applause rest on the successful 
administration of the government under great difficulties. 
He overcame and put down the rebellion — that was great 
merit ; but in doing it, he struck at and destroyed the 
cause — that was greater. He preserved liberty by destroy- 
ing slavery. He made all future rebellions for the same 
object impossible. He washed from tlie nation's escutcheon 
its deepest stain. He knocked off the chains from the limbs 
of more than four millions of his " fellow-countrymen," and 
bid them stand forth in their manhood, and has now gone 
beside Wilberforce to lay these manacles at the feet of Him 
who bids us all " undo the heavy burdens." There can be 
no doubt that in all climes and ages, the Proclamation of 
Emancipation will be one of his crowning glories. 

Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence ; Abraham Lincoln gave it a wider application and a 
truer interpretation. 

Standing in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, on his 
way to Washington, he declared " he never had a feeling 
politically, that did not spring from sentiments embodied in 
the Declaration of Independence." " If this country," said 
he further, " can be saved on that basis, I shall be one of the 
happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. But if this 
country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I 
was about to say, I would rather be assassinated on this spot 
than surrender it." Noble martyr! he gave not up his 
principle, but his life, to save it ! 

" The patriot, all unused to arms, 
Bewails the clanp of warV alarms, 
And mourns the ancry fleld; 
But when hiis country calls, he flics. 
He arms, he strikes, he dares, he dies, 
And will not, cannot yield." 

Wherever this gospel shall be preached, said the Saviour 



31 

of men, of the woman who anointed His head with ointment, 
this shall be told in memorial of her. So wherever shall 
be spread the great principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, wherever men shall love liberty and hate tyranny, 
wherever men shall acknowledge God's justice or reverence 
his creatures, this great act of Abraham Lincoln shall be re- 
hearsed " in memoriam.''^ 

Patriotism and gratitude may unite to rear his monument, 
they may lay the granite deep and pile the marble high — 
art may come and chisel it into the most beavitiful and last- 
ing forms, but they can raise no such structure as he has 
buildcd for himself, " Exegi monumentum are perennium.^' 

My fellow-citizens, Abraham Lincoln is dead. The Presi- 
dent has become the martyr. He has finished his work and 
sealed it with his blood. For his fame the past is secure, 
and the future radiant and glorious. As we mourn him on 
this day of national humiliation and fasting, how beautifully 
appropriate are the words of the prophet : 

" Is not this the fast that I have chosen : to loose the bands of 
wickedness, to nndo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go 
free, and that ye break every yoke ?" 

My fellow-citizens, the first thought of every loyal heart is, 
how untimely is this death ! 

For four years he had toiled in anguish and sorrow to 
subdue the rebellion and save his country, and now, just 
now, when his success was secure, when its armed foes were 
surrendering, when he had been — not as a conqueror, but 
as an American magistrate — into the capital of the blatant 
confederacy, and had returned to Washington so hopeful, 
and humbly rejoicing that peace was so nigh, to our sight 
" how hard it was to die !" 

But, my friends, God has higher purposes than ours. We 
do not know what the future shall yet unfold. A man may 
do by his death, what he cannot possibly by his life — and 
mourn as we may, and as we do, there will yet abide the 
deep conviction that from this new-made grave there shall 



32 

come up a firmer piirpose, a renewed strength, and a more 
consuming, sacrificing patriotism, resulting in great bles- 
sings to the country. 

He sleeps well, the Commander-in-Chief, with his soldiers 
— a shining host — bivouacked in the Elysian fields, picketed 
by angel bands. 

Do you say he died untimely ? What if he had been 
slain at Baltimore on his first journey to Washington ? 
What if at the first battle of Bull Run ? or the retreat from 
the Chickahominy ? or last Autumn before his re-election ? 
or before the fall of Richmond ? or the surrender of Lee ? 

Rather say, if die he must, that he died in good time, 
and when his death could bring no advantage to his coun- 
try's enemies, when it would add new fervor to zeal, new 
devotion to patriotism, new strength to Union sentiment, 
and an undying halo to his imperishable renown. 

" We tell thj- doom without a sigh — 
For thou art Freedom's now and Fame's, 
One of the few immortal names 
That were not bom to die." 

Fellow-citizens, these are times of strange vicissitudes. 
The passing hours are filled with the most wonderful and 
diverse events. One day there come the booming sounds 
of victory ; the next, Richmond has fallen, and the third, 
Lee has surrendered. The cannon roar, the merry bells 
ring out, fireworks blaze, rockets streak the heavens and 
sparkle in the sky, and joyous men and women shout that 
peace is near. Night settles down on the land, men lie 
down in sweet sleep because there shall be no more fighting 
and no more carnage. But night is startled with a strange 
slmddering. The telegraph whispers in the cars of the 
sleepers that the President has been fatally shot, and tliey 
rise to learn in the morning that he is dead. And then 
those bells, but a few hours before ringing so joyously, toll 
the requium of the dead. Everywhere around is hung the 
drapery of woe, " and the mourners go about the streets." 



33 

From the bights of joy we are phmged to the depths of 
sorrow. To-day, the good ship sails on the crests of tlie 
waves, the winds fair, the liorizon bright, and " all sails 
drawing." The next, the storm bo-^'ls, the spirits of the 
deep are loose, the ship plunges and wallows in the "trough 
of the sea," and the sky above her can scarcely be discerned. 
But it is a "comfort to know the good ship still makes pro- 
gress. She is tight and staunch, no part broken. The 
haven is in sight. The mutineers among the crew have 
murdered the captain, but the mate stands by the wheel, 
with irons for the feet and ropes for the necks of those who 
resist his authority, and he will bring her into port. 

Sail on, " sail on, O Ship of State! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
Humanity, with all its fears, 
With all its hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy ftite ! 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 

Our faith triuuiijhant o'er our fears. 

Are all with thee — are all with thee!" 

Fellow-citizens, it is time this exercise should close, I 
should fail, however, to accomplish my full purpose, and to 
do justice to that deep sense of religious responsibility which 
always pervaded the public life of Mr. Lincoln, did I do so 
without recognizing, and calling upon you to recognize, the 
Providence which has guided us in all these great and 
varied events. There is a God in history, and His hand 
marks the beginning, and progress, and ending of this great 
struggle. The most unoljservant see it, and the most un- 
grateful acknowledge it. 

Plotting and seeking the destruction of the government 
for twenty or thirty years, and selecting their own time to 
attempt it, how did it happen ? tell me, ye who can, how did 
it happen that these rebels should have chosen, above all 
others, the accession of the administration of Abraham 
Lincoln, for their purpose — a, man cautious, sagacious, de- 



34 

termined, persevering and unflincliing — loving tlie Union 
so dearly that he would almost be willing to be assassinated 
to save it, and dying without a murmur, in the execution 
of the work ? How did this happen ? Could they have 
chosen more auspiciously for us, or more unfortunately for 
themselves and their designs ? 

Why did they not select the accession of Mr. Buchanan's 
administration ? They had formed their designs long be- 
fore, and they knew the " fashion of the man." Just imagine, 
now, the attempt to have been made then. They seize the 
arms, arsenals and forts of the government ; they secede ; 
they confederate ; they say to Mr. Buchanan, " We are in 
earnest ! we will have a government of our own ! we repu- 
diate your authority ! we are armed, and will resist force by 
force !" What would have been his answer ? We have it 
in his message of 1860. 

" Has the Constitution," he asks, " delegated to Congress 
the power to coerce a State into submission which is at- 
tempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn from the 
confederacy ? After much serious reflection, I have arrived 
at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to 
Congress, or to any other department in the Federal Gov- 
ernment." 

And so he would have done nothing to save it, and the 
broken fragments of the Union would have floated away, 
and been driven by the storm wliithersoever its fury might 
liave carried them. Who restrained the wrath of these men 
until it could be made to praise Him? But again — these 
rebels were determined to break up this government, and Mr. 
Lincoln to preserve it. They "were l)cnt" u])on a govern- 
ment recognizing .aud perpetuating slavery, foiuided upon 
it. He Avas equally bent upon saving the old one, whether 
slavery survived or })erished. Said lie, in his letter to !Mr. 
Greeley, August 22, 18G2 : 

" My paramount object is to save tlio I'uiou, ami not cither to 
save or destroy slavery. 



35 

" If I eoiikl save the Union without freeing a slave, I would 
do it ; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; 
and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I 
would do that." 

But upon this non-committal ground he could not suc- 
ceed. Providence had its own purpose, that the Union 
should live l)y the death of slavery, and through that door 
alone could success be attained. 

When this war commenced, was any poor creature more 
abject and pitiable than this poor slave ? One side did not 
much care what was done with him, and the other sought 
to rear its habitation upon his woes, and fatten and grow 
rich upon his blood and his bones. 

The war went on, and victory and defeat intermingled 
and swayed hither and thither, until one side and then the 
other — they who had neglected him, and they who had de- 
spitefully used him — were obliged to call him to their aid 
and beseech him to fight for them. 

One might have supposed, if I may so remark without 
irreverence, one might have supposed, I say, that Providence 
would have been satisfied by compelling us loyal men, anti- 
slavery men, to call him to our aid ; but nay, not so. Provi- 
dence compelled the slave masters, by the extremity of their 
necessities, to the degradation of imploring their slaves to 
aid their wicked designs, and then left them to be mocked 
by their refusal. 

When the war closed, the slave marched a freeman in 
the ranks of freedom, beneath the Stars and Stripes, and he 
followed with streaming eyes and grateful heart his greatest 
human benefactor to the tomb. But these men — they who 
were so proud and noble, haughty and imperious ; they who 
despised the democracy of numbers, thought themselves 
only fit to rule, and attempted to set up the aristocracy of 
the few ; they who said they were of the superior race and 
ought to govern ; they who were so powerful, who had broad 
lands and " herds in their stalls, whose granaries wheat and 



36 

corn filled, to whom the earth gave of her increase, and in 
whose palaces was prosperity — these men — what an awful 
retribution has overtaken them ! 

They have failed in that which they most desired ; and 
now, with desolated lands, ruined homes, sundered ties, 
spidts broken, they wander in woods and forests, or hide in 
swamps or among the mountains, outcasts without hope, to 
escape the punishment of that government whose power 
they defied, and which they attempted to destroy. 

Surely there is a God in history, and let us reverently 
give thanks that He has made its pages at last so eloquent 
and brilliant for our beloved country. 

And now, in closing, over tlie grave of our martyred 
President, let us renew our fealty to this flag. It has been 
consecrated by the death of many a soldier, and is now 
baptized in this richest blood. It has waved in victory and 
drooped in defeat ; but now, " full high advanced," it shall 
sail every sea unchallenged, and command the respect of 
every land. Wherever it shall go, there, too, shall go a 
purer Christianity, and a better civilization — the freedman 
shall bless it, and the oppressed seek unto it. We will 
raise it's starry folds on high, and no man shall dare to strike 
it down. 

" When Freedom iioiu lier inouutaiu higlit 
Unfurled her standard to tlie :iiv, 
She tore the azure robe of nifiht, 
And set her stars of glory there; 
She niiiiyled with the jjorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 
And striped the jiure, celestial white 
With streakiii;;s of the morninu; li^'ht. 

Flag of the free heart's oidy home, 
^ Hy angel hamls to valor given, 

Thy stars have lit the welkin dome. 
And all thy hues were born in Heaven. 
Forever float that standard sheet! 
Where breathes the foe, but falls before lis. 
With Freeilom's soil beneath our feet 
And Free<loiirs baiiin-r sln^aniiiig o'er us. 



LB S '12 



